News and Updates

Take a look at what goes on behind-the-scenes in the world’s leading museum of art and design. From bestselling exhibitions to hidden gems in the collections, learn about our latest projects, ideas and discoveries.

Plans are afoot to move the V&A’s Members’ Room and Carmody Groarke, an award-winning architecture studio based in London, have been selected to design the new £1.3 million flexible and atmospheric space. The competition attracted interest from architects across the world before 5 teams were shortlisted and the winner was announced. The new Members’ Room […]

‘Better it is to get wisdom than gold’ Motto above the original entrance to the V&A As the V&A has recently launched its research institute VARI, and is obliged to make its publicly funded project outcomes (currently journal articles, excluding monographs at present – see AHRC Open Access ) available to all under open access, […]

The V&A’s National Art Library has its own WIFI hotspot exclusively for members of the library. From your own device, you can now access the museum’s range of electronic resources including the VOGUE ARCHIVE, JSTOR, Oxford ART Online, ARTSTOR and the Art Sales Index.

This post was written by Nadia Baadj, Assistant professor of Art History & Rosalind Franklin Fellow at University of Groningen and former V&A Research Fellow What kinds of secrets do early modern cabinets hold inside, behind their locked doors, hidden drawers, and endless maze of compartments? Far from static pieces of furniture, the examples on […]

What is David McConochie’s secret? In the space of a year, he’s bagged two prestigious illustration awards and a lucrative commission for The Folio Society. He’s just been crowned Winner of the V&A Illustration Awards and to mark the opening of the 2016 Illustration Awards display, I caught up with David to find out more […]

This is the Morlaix staircase, an object beautifully displayed in the Medieval and Renaissance Galleries of the V&A. It is over 11 metres tall and comes from a house in the town of Morlaix, in Brittany, France. The question it poses for me is: “When did it stop being a staircase and become a museum […]

This weekend a new display, Master Strokes: Dutch and Flemish Drawings from the Golden Age opens here at the V&A, offering visitors the chance to see some previously little-known treasures from the Prints, Drawings and Paintings collection. The V&A’s outstanding collection of Dutch and Flemish drawings is one of the largest and most important in […]

Over the last few months, I have been cataloguing a group of 99 photographs by the Hungarian photographer Brassaï. They were acquired by the V&A as part of a bequest from his widow, Mme Gilberte Boyer Brassaï, who died in 2005. Brassaï was born in 1899 as Gyula Halász in the Transylvanian town of Brassó. […]

This summer, the V&A is collaborating with La Biennale di Venezia and the University of Applied Arts Vienna to launch a new summer school programme. This inaugural La Biennale Summer School will invite participants to engage in a week of cognitive experiments and adventures. It runs alongside the Biennale Special Project on Applied Arts, ‘A […]

The V&A’s Director Martin Roth was recently awarded the Verdienstkreuz Klasse des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany). He was given the medal by the German Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at a reception in Berlin who gave the following speech, here reproduced in German and English. […]